Poaching youngsters a bit too easy?

Played six seasons of my Newcastle save. Started with the idea of buying the young talent only (Arsenal model if you like to call it that), though since a takeover after 2 seasons I've made it "one world class star every summer and youngsters". Scouts do their work, also I regularly check player search with "under 18" filter on and scout everybody with a value of £1m or more. As the title suggests, I've done brilliantly, maybe even too brilliantly (though I'm not after hyper-realism, FM is an escape from grim reality of supporting Newcastle).

Few things:

-Finding and judging the talent is ridiculously easy once you're figured out game mechanics, which in this sense has been the same since nineties (I admit, using "player search" is borderline cheating so I could/should stop that).

-Almost every youngster is willing to join your club.

-AI clubs don't value their talent highly enough. I base my decisions to buy on scout reports (and not buy if personality/few key stats are wrong), and never even check players my scouts don't rate. So practically the same info AI is using. Still, practically any player "guaranteed" to be world class, can be bought for max 5m, usually 1-2m when he's 16 or 17.

-And yes, I think it's fair to say some players are guaranteed to become world class in this game. Just a gut feeling, but imho talented youngsters practically never lose their potential in the game if you have a good setup and play them. Happens all the time in real life. I can't recall a single "Freddy Adu -style" fall from grace in all my years playing CM/FM (could obviously be my memory playing tricks on me, do you have different memories?).

Not this might be one of those "I've played too much and now I'm too good at this" -rants, but I genuinely think that humans have a huge (and partly unfair) advantage in squad building. Can't think of a proper solution within the current game, I've heard some people don't look at attributes, but then again scout reports only give you very little. "He's quick but not a very good header, 3½ stars" isn't exactly enough to make a decision on a player. And at the same time scout reports are too good (contrary to what I just said, I know. Maybe "too accurate overall verdict, but not detailed enough" is what I'm trying to say.), report card already tells you everything you want to know and scouting for one or three matches makes no difference as the report is essentially the same, no matter if the player had a match of his life or a stinker.

Opinions, your solutions?

I actually think that about them being willing or not to join works well, i can never poach from clubs "bigger" than me(at least as soon as they are out of the academy) but can poach around clubs with smaller reputation..

The AI squad planning isn't all that great(one could say that the game gets easier as time goes on and the top teams lose the real players) since they seem to rely too much on CA instead of the actual attributes.. i agree that it's easy to see how good a kid is going to be.. maybe the whole scouting thing needs to be revamped.

For me I think the AI needs to keep their highly rated youngsters in their squad and play them more. But in my save I'm always battling City, Barca, R. Madrid, and Man Utd for good youngsters, I don't always get the player but I would say 95% of the time I do.

Arsenal model if you like to call it that

Exactly. Not every club is Arsenal. Don't assume that all clubs want to develop youth players into world class, and even if they want to, they don't have the coaches and facilities to do so. So if they think they can make profits from young players, then they will.

I genuinely think that humans have a huge (and partly unfair) advantage in squad building

Because human intelligence is better than AI intelligence. It's not a FM thing, it's AI technology and computer limitation; it's the same reason why single player mode is easier than online play in FPS and RTS games.

Opinions, your solutions?

I would suggest scout reports to include the player's form. For example, a youth's scout report would show his CA/PA and his form in the U18 team. If he has more than 3 star PA and an average form of over 7.5 over the last 5 games, then he's talented and many AI clubs would want him.

Actually FM10 did a better job at keeping youngsters. I could never buy them from the big clubs unless I offered like millions per year and I mean like 5 or 6 million per year. While now in FM11 I just bought about 3-4 amazing youngsters from Man U even though SAF was at the helm.

Good points Athos.

Especially the first (never thought of it that way, silly me) and the third (that's the way forward for the next edition!).

Bit divided on the second one though. I admit I don't know much about programming or AI (except it's still way behind human intelligence), but then again AI seems to be really good (=much better than me, I rely entirely on scouts) at judging PA (though I suppose scouts just read the things invisible to me and then give me their interpretation) so why can't it use the same information to decide whether to keep or sell their youngsters?

Coentrao, you're probably right. Newcastle has a relatively good rep from the go, so I never really had to fight against bigger clubs for talent. Only the limited funds, but then again Ashley's last deed was to fund a transfer for Brazilian wonderkid striker...

All that said, between my posts I've had an offer accepted for 17 year old winger from Real Madrid. £15m, which is obviously way more than I said on the first post. I'm 99% sure he'll sign soon, extremely interested, I'm the only one offering permanent transfer and contract negotiation screen went green on my second suggestion. He's got CA of 2½ stars and PA 4, which makes him the brightest talent in the world at the moment (I'm at the stage where my squad is so good that no-one in the world gets higher rating than 4 stars), so I think £15m is a steal.

I agree with OP that buying and training world class players happens easily in FM, but definitely there are flops as well. Even playing as R Madrid and become the top richest and taking SPL rating above EPL, there are some youngsters that you can't possibly sign.

1. If the kid is from a big club like Man U, Barca, etc, it's extremely hard to sign them. They ask 5-7 times their face value. So, signing a a $2-3M 16 y/o kid usually end up negotiating up to $15-20M+. I just saw a new regen from Juventus with face value of $11M... extremely good for his age and could be the next rooney... but I'm pretty sure I'll need to pay like $50M for the club to let him go.

2. Even if the club accepts the bid, there are some player who wouldn't even start negotiating with me. My rep is higher than those clubs, e.g., against Sporting in SPL, but they just straight out reject.

3. Sometimes, their agent offer me the player, I like it.. willing to pay 5 times their face value and come contract negotiation, they straight out reject me without even want to start the talk.

4. And sometimes, they agree contract with me and end up breaking eventually because they feel they are still too young to move to a different country. Happens to a 16 y/o german kid from Bayern. I had to wait for a couple of years to sign him again.

5. And not all youngster can possibly become the next superstar. I sign a lot of kids per season and scouted just like you said, but some of my most expensive kids tends to turn out to be a flop. Never become anything and not even good enough for my bench. About to offload my 3rd $20M signing coz he's not becoming the star I thought he would be, aka the next Freddy Adu. Even had a left winger with high rating, but after 5 seasons in and playing in 1st team since 18 y/o, the kid attribute just isn't impressive while his other colleague surpass him. Maybe just low ambition. Then again, Arsenal decided to pay me $40M for him and I happily offload the kid.

So, it's not as easy as it sounds. Of course, if the kid is only about 22-23 y/o and he's not becoming anything, you can usually offload them back. But if you poach from Argentina or Brazil or Mexico, it's really really easy, and cheap and they turn out rather good.

4. And sometimes, they agree contract with me and end up breaking eventually because they feel they are still too young to move to a different country. Happens to a 16 y/o german kid from Bayern. I had to wait for a couple of years to sign him again.

in older games that used to be (still is?) because they've agreed to sign a pro contract on X date. nothing you can do till then and i dont know if its still the same.

How about the player potential is given as a range rather than a specific recommendation? In reality it's much harder to judge the potential of a player compared to their current ability, expanding the star criteria from 5 stars to say ten would allow a bit more ambiguity. The better scouts would be able to provide you with a narrower range whereas the poorer scouts would have very little idea other than that a player should get better than their CA but perhaps won't be world class.

personally i think CA/PA shouldnt be visible in any way.

I sign any player that has a 4.5 or 5 star rating

They sit in the reserves until I need them. If they don't make it by age 23 they are sold on.

I just scour leagues looking for players, usually can get 5 - 10 youngsters at the start of a season from ages 14 - 18

Now 14 year olds won't have 4.5 or 5 stars (if they did I'd start them) so age comes into too. But if a 14 year old has a 3.5 or 4 stars then I will take them.

I think part of the problem is that both we and the AI can see PA too well. I'm sorry, but if the player you're looking at is currently crap for his level and age but has very high potential, nobody would believe it in real life. I mean think about it, who are the guys that have really high PA in the FM database? The youngsters that currently shine for U-21/U-19 teams, and the ones that have debuted among the first team and done well. However chances are a lot of them will flop in the future! Whereas a lot of the young guys that have low PA in the database will be late bloomers and surprise the **** out of everyone. How high was Hugo Viana's PA in the database back then when he was 20? He was european young player of the year, must've been about a -9. Now what about Luca Toni's or Didier Drogba's? They were unknowns! See what I mean?

Of course this is now where we can go philosophical and say "ah, but Viana and all the other guys like him never reached their potential". Perhaps that holds true for a few cases, Fabio Paim comes to mind as a clear example of someone who threw away his talent, but there still is a cognitive bias in our real life judgment of PA which is to think it's much more closely tied to CA than it actually is. In FM terms, what this means is that even an amazing 20/20 JA/JP scout shouldn't be able to use his DeLorean to see the future and should still be biased to some degree towards CA.

I believe the effect is already there as some in-game scouts/coaches' valuations of players seem to fluctuate through player form and reputation, but it's not nearly strong enough. If you have a crap scout he SHOULD disregard PA, look at a player and think "ah, he's fairly good for a 21 year old so he should be about 1 star better when he's at his peak", because that's the common expectation for 21 y.olds. Whereas a world class scout would have the vision to see this guy can become a late bloomer and actually improve 2 stars. And in reality, maybe he still has 3 stars in him - if you can train him and play him to reach that level, that is.

I'm in strong agreement with this thread. I think there's a large number of issues that contribute to the problem of it being to easy to pick up young players. I've outlined some of them below.

Finding Players:

- Noikeee sums part of this up pretty well, scouts are simply too accurate and need to base their PA predictions more on CA compared to other players of that age group, suitability of attributes for position, and whether a player is tearing it up at youth/reserve/lower level.

- I would add to this that estimated value is a really big problem in terms of finding high potential young players, it acts as a serious giveaway.

Buying Players:

- Firstly, it is possible for a manager to judge the rough PA of one of his players at too early a stage. For the purposes of this, I am going to take the example of Arsenal's Frimpong, as he is usually sold for around £500k at the end of season one on the saves I have. At this point, he has just turned 19. It should not be possible for the Arsenal manager to tell that a 19 year old player is not going to make it unless he has a low CA compared to others of his age group or he is obviously seriously deficient in some area crucial to his position (Frimpong is neither of these). This sort of thing doesn't become evident until 21 or so, and even then you can't be sure. So bigger clubs should be less willing to let young players leave until the sort of age where it would be possible IRL to tell whether they are going to make it or not.

- Secondly, even if the club suspects a player like Frimpong might not make it but also suspects that he still has quite a lot of scope for development, it would be worth their while investing another year or two in him to see if they can develop him to an extent where he would command a larger transfer fee, or maybe act as a tempting part-exchange for another player. So again, clubs should be less willing to sell young players who still have scope for development.

- Equally, a player such as Frimpong should be less willing to leave a big club until he sees that he is not really likely to break through. This is especially the case for even younger players (17, 18) who are willing to leave the academies of big clubs for even 'hot prospect' status at a somewhat smaller club, without any promise of regular first team action. I posted a thread about this in the bugs forum and it's apparently being looked at: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/232932-Demo-Young-players-at-good-clubs-too-willing-to-leave-for-good-%28balancing-issue%29

- Players 18-20 years old value 'key' squad status too highly. This means that they will drop down to the 7th tier for key player status at a part-time club rather than try and make the grade at a 3rd tier pro club as a 'hot prospect' for the same or more money. Obviously there will be a few players IRL that will value first-team action above all else but these are likely to be an exception rather than the rule that they are in the game. I am talking about players who appear to have the potential to make it at third tier level, by the way. Thread here: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/247119-Too-many-players-willing-to-come-to-smaller-clubs-for-key-player-status

-Lastly, players with the obvious potential to become global superstars and who play in a medium-ranked league (such as Brazil) are too willing to make quick moves to lower reputation clubs in better leagues rather than wait for a truly big club to come calling. I'm going to use the example of Ganso here, who is willing at the start of the game to move to EPL relegation strugglers, obviously this wouldn't be the case in real life. I'm sure there are a lot of other examples, Lukaku is another one off the top of my head.

Developing Players:

-The development curve of players is generally too uniform and predictable. This is partly related to the over-efficient judgement of coaching staff, but also linked to the player development model in general. Too many players have a good chance to at least approach their full potential ability. Obstacles such as injury, persistent loss of form, unhappiness, attitude issues do not appear to have as much of a medium-term detrimental effect on development as they do in real life.

-Burnout does not happen on enough occasions. Most players in the modern game have periods of burnout where they are ineffective, their CA drops somewhat, and they have to essentially continue their development from a step lower than they might have been at before. This of course doesn't happen to everyone, but I would say it affects the majority of players at some stage or other. I have heard that this is in the game but have not seen it have enough of an effect. It seems to be too easy to have 10-15 excellent seasons over the course of a career, this should be an exception rather than a rule. I don't think the majority of players IRL have more than 5-6 seasons at their peak. One reason for this seems to be that young players in the game reach too high CA too early in their careers.